


We Fortunate Few

by actualkoschei



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M, POV First Person, Pre-Canon, Sibling Bonding, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2019-10-01 09:07:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17241467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualkoschei/pseuds/actualkoschei
Summary: An even less official, though maybe more accurate, account of some of the events covered in The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.





	1. Chapter 1

I remember the summer of 1899 as an usually hot and bright one. It started early, being unseasonably warm by early April. It felt like summer, unfortunately, right when I should have been studying for my NEWTs, presenting a distraction, as it felt like time to ignore my work and do nothing but lie in the shade beside the Black Lake. The best compromise, I found, was to study perched in the large stone arches around the courtyard. This all sounds like a digression from the point, I’m sure. But it seems like the most natural starting place for the story, so you must be patient with me.

Somehow, despite the distractions of balmy heat and bright sunshine, I left the examination hall with a good dose of confidence mixed in with my anxiety, likely more than my classmates were feeling. It could be called arrogance, the way I felt about my studies at that age. In retrospect, that might be the right word for me then. Arrogant, and naive, too. But at the time, I thought it to be nothing but perfectly warranted confidence in my own abilities, which I am not modest enough to deny were considerable, even in my student days.

My brother met up with me at the carriages that were to take us to the train home, and his expression was noticeably different than mine. He glared out at the world from behind his tangled hair. That was hardly unusual for Aberforth then, so I greeted him with a casual “how did it go?”

“Don’t expect me to get as many OWLs as you did.” He told me, a sulky note behind his words.

“I’m sure you did fine.” I tried to encourage him, with a hand on his shoulder. He jerked away from my touch, all teenage recalcitrance. At the age of seventeen, I felt the two years I had on his fifteen made me as mature as an adult.

A sense of elation filled me, bright and bubbly, but tinged with a dark sadness. I was leaving Hogwarts, and this wasn’t like the last times I had left. This time, I would not be returning. At least not as a student. It had already been proposed to me, not infrequently, in fact, that I might consider becoming a professor. I smiled and nodded, but at night, it had become my habit to take a stack of postcards from various European cities, begged off fellow students, from inside the cover of my heavy History of Magic textbook and leaf through them, dreaming of the scenes trapped in the sketches and photographs. Of strolling narrow cobbled streets between tall, looming buildings, of drinking bitter coffee in small cafes. Of learning the secrets Hogwarts would not teach me from venerable wizards and witches with exotic accents.

I was dreaming then, rocked by the carriages, and then by the train. Aberforth, too, was quiet, lost in a world of his own just as much as I was. It was a tendency all three of us then shared; it is a tendency that, as far as I know, the two of us still share.

I never inquired as to what he thought about, it never occurred to me too. Sometimes now, I wish I had. I wish I had known him better. Not that we weren’t friends. Before that summer, we were, as much friends as two such different brothers, two years apart, could be.

I will reach the part I am sure you are all so eager to hear about soon. But he was not to enter my life yet, not for another few weeks.

The train dropped us in Kings Cross station, as was the custom even then. All around Aberforth and I, children streamed off the train, running into the waiting arms of their parents with varying levels of eagerness, or so it seemed. The two of us stood back. There was nobody there to meet us. Our mother often said to us that she wished she could be. Our mother often said to us that she wished many things, always in the same wistful, hushed tone.

We had to change trains then, so we slipped through the barrier to the Muggle side of the station, lugging heavy trunks, a very ruffled cat, and a disgruntled toad with us, in order to board a Muggle train — though I spotted many others I could tell to be fellow wizards and witches — to Godric’s Hollow.

It was dark by the time we reached the station — then little more than a wooden platform emerging from the woods — there, and a light rain was falling, the heat of the day having retreated to a sort of clingy clamminess. Not the sort of weather that would be pleasant to walk in, especially not carrying all our luggage. So, reluctantly, Aberforth gave me his hand to allow me to Apparate us to the gate of our house. You see, he was still not sure he trusted me to be allowed to Apparate. He certainly was not used to the idea of me as an adult wizard, and, to be honest, nor was I.

In the half-dark, I could see a dark silhouette against the lamplight in the front window. Still, waiting. Too small to be our mother. At the sight of her, Aberforth dropped his luggage and started running towards the door, and at the same moment, her shadow disappeared from the window, and the door banged open and shut, and she came flying up the path, a tiny little figure in white, red braids trailing behind her, arms stretched out to greet us. I will always remember her like that. I will always remember that image, her pure happiness, her love.

And then we were all staggering together, both of our arms around her, her arms around both of us, Aberforth’s hand on my back, our luggage forgotten on the damp ground.

Our mother was calling from the door then, and Aberforth went to answer her, so Ariana’s arms went around my neck, and she smiled up at me. “Tell me a story, Al?” Her face seemed further away from mine than I remembered. I must have grown during the year.

I brushed a loose strand of her back out of her face. “Tonight at bedtime, Ari. I promise.”

Seemingly satisfied, she pressed her face into my chest. “Missed you.” Her voice was muffled.

“I missed you too.” And it was honest. I did miss her, all those times away at school. And the times after.

I held her hand as she fell asleep that night. She never liked the dark, and even with a magical light hovering above her head, she never could fall asleep alone.

Myself, I remember sleeping like the dead that night, finally in the comfort of my own bed.

The next day dawned clear and warm, but promising not to be as hot as the day before. Still, I was grateful to be able to wear lighter clothes than my heavy school robes.

I was buttering toast for my breakfast when my mother came in, already dressed, impeccably cool and calm in a pale blue summer dress, not a hair out of place. “I want you to come to tea with Bathilda Bagshot today, Albus. She asked for you specifically. You wouldn’t happen to know why, would you?” Her voice was cool, but not cold, nor entirely critical.

I shrugged, before remembering she hated the gesture. “She wrote to me about my Transfiguration paper, maybe she wants to talk to me about that?”

My mother seemed to forgive my lapse in manners, and graced me with a small smile. “Good. You’ll come with me, then.” That was something close to praise, the closest I would get from her.

I was sweating by the time we reached Bathilda’s house, my shirt collar stuck to the back of my neck. I adjusted it surreptitiously as I went to knock on the door. Had my mother not been with me, I would have likely not knocked at all, just called out to her from the entryway. Godric’s Hollow was that sort of town when I was growing up, for all my family made the best efforts to exclude ourselves from that.

Perhaps it was lucky I knocked that morning, because it wasn’t Bathilda who answered the door. I stumbled a little when the door opened faster than I would have expected, and found my elbow caught by a boy my age, who yanked me upright quite forcefully. “Ah.” His voice was smooth, and clearly foreign. “You must be the Dumbledores. Aunt Bathilda said to expect you. She’s just gone down to the shops. Happy to meet you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I've been absent for a while. My excuse is that I've been underwater between college work and my own original writing. Anyway, now that it's summer break I should be able to update more consistently. Cross your fingers for me on that one.

I looked up into his face then, and found myself at a loss for words. People will say that he was handsome. Often as if this was some kind of moral failing on his part. Handsome is not the word I would use. It carries an inappropriate connotation of conventionality. I would venture to say he was beautiful then. Golden hair, curly in the heat, haloing his face, features that might be best described as finely carved, skin several shades browner than mine. But it was his eyes that drew my attention. One a shade of brown so dark it was almost black, the other a blue so light and bright that at first I thought it to be pure white. I stayed into them deeper than was polite, my mouth dry, lips slightly parted in anticipation of words that I had forgotten.

And he smiled at me.

I will stop here to make one thing clear. This was not love at first sight, I do not believe such a thing exists. I was certainly not alone in being easily caught by his charms, either. He never needed to try in order to draw all eyes to him.

I rocked back onto my feet, pulling away from his hands, and, more crucially, closing my mouth.

He was still smiling. “Are you quite well?”

“O-only the heat.” My lips and tongue felt thick and clumsy. “My apologies.”

He shook his head. “No need for any. Come inside, then, out of the sun.”

The sun. Yes. That must be what was turning my head so, I thought, and followed him gratefully.

We drank weak tea, but I barely tasted it. No matter how hard I tried to avoid catching his eye, mine were always drawn back to his face. My mother and Bathilda talked to each other as stiffly as ever, but I found myself hearing not a word they said. So much of that afternoon slipped by in a blur.

“Aunt Bathilda gave me your paper to read.” He said to me at length, startling me out of a half-dream prompted by a novel I had read the week before.

It could have been said that the house was over-warm, and, yes, that I had begun to fall asleep. “What?”

“Your paper. On Transfiguration. Very interesting, I thought. Not simply regurgitating a textbook in a different order. That’s all too common these days, isn’t it?”

“Yes!” He had given voice to a thought I’d often had, but in bolder words. That would become a habit of his very soon.

He shook his head, and I could see the fine hairs around his hairline stuck to his face with sweat. Evidently, he was feeling the heat as much as I was. “I’m glad to meet someone else who thinks so. Do you have any thoughts on philosophy? On magical ethics?”

I could feel a smile spreading uncontrollably across my face. “Are you asking to hear them?” I felt I had to make sure, you see. I had a habit then — perhaps I still do, but now that I’m older and more respected it has become acceptable — of sharing my thoughts in great depth with people who had only passingly mentioned the topic and did not really want to hear them. I annoyed a great many people in this manner. I did not want to annoy Gellert.

“Indeed I am. My curiosity does not stop at whether you have them, I assumed you would. Tell me.”

I found myself lost for words, at the worst possible time. “I think… I think that… perhaps the authorities in the field have become overzealous of late.” I proposed carefully. “I also think that this is not perhaps the most appropriate conversation for morning tea.” I do not know what prompted that last part. Reluctance to seem out of the norm, perhaps, any more than I already had.

His smile turned sheepish. “Perhaps not. I apologise, I have been called… overenthusiastic.” The tone suggested that that was on the nicer end of the spectrum of things he had been called.

If I had put my mind to it, I might have come up with some less than flattering terms for it myself. I couldn’t fail to notice that he was somewhat overwhelming, his presence seeming to suck all the air out of the room, leaving none for the rest of us. My first impression of him was, in fact, beginning to sour, for all I still felt a strange draw towards him. Beautiful, he was, I could not deny that, but with an intense presence that made me feel uncomfortable. Made me feel small, and unsettled, ill at ease in my skin.

When I looked back at him, he had let his expression slip in the moments when I looked away. He looked stung, truly hurt by what I had said.

Social graces were never a great strength of mine. Nonetheless, I tried to fill the air with something more pleasant. “So, what brings you here to Godric’s Hollow? Have you come visiting family?” He looked too young to have finished school, but he clearly hadn’t gone to Hogwarts, or I would have known him, and perhaps, I thought, other wizarding schools finished earlier.

Unfortunately, this proved quite decisively to not be the lighter topic I had thought. The mask he was still maintaining, even if only by a thread, fell away completely, and his beautiful eyes filled with tears. He turned away from me, hiding his face behind his hair.

I bit at my lip. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean… oh, no, I’ve gone and made a mess of this.” I fretted, not meaning to say the last out loud.

“No.” He said, but quietly, and there were tears audible in his voice. “It isn’t your fault. I have come visiting, as a matter of fact. Aunt Bathilda — Ms Bagshot — she is an aunt of mine… or a cousin?” The tone of his voice began to lighten again. “I’m never quite sure. I just call her Aunt Bathilda. But anyhow, yes, I’ve come visiting, or rather, I happened to end up in the area, and it seemed a good time to come and see her.”

“How do you happen to end up in Godric’s Hollow?” I am sure I sounded somewhat resentful. At the time, Godric’s Hollow seemed like the end of the earth to me.

He looked back at me, from under his hair. His eyes were shiny, slightly red, but his gaze was no less intense. “It’s all but inevitable when you are chasing the Peverells.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double feature, babey.

“You’re chasing the Hallows?” I blurted out, excitement sending the idea of polite conversation right out of my mind.

He smiled at me, and my mouth went dry. “I said I’m chasing the Peverells.” He corrected, amused. “But you’re right to notice that one naturally links back to the others. I’ve been looking at folk tales, my dear, all over Europe. Not just the Hallows.”

“Why? Do you want to be the Master of Death?” I asked, perhaps too bluntly.

His lips twitched, but his small smile did not vanish again. “I want to know. There’s so much knowledge that we have lost, so much unique magic that has passed into the realm of tales. I want to learn it.” Then, his smile did fade. “I always wanted too much to learn.” He said, with a sadness that tugged at something inside my chest.

“What do you mean?” I pressed. “Is it not a good thing to want to learn? I would have thought it was.”

“So would I.” His voice was quiet, and not nearly so smooth as it had been so far. He sounded ragged. He sounded young, and I was made even more certain he could not be that much older than me. “Others would disagree.”

“Who?” The motivation behind my question was no longer so much curiosity as, somehow, desire to comfort. My voice had turned soft and gentle.

He rubbed his eyes with the back of his knuckles. “The authorities” — he poured scorn into the word — “of Durmstrang. I was thrown out, you see, for “unnatural experiments”.” His tone was mocking, yet somehow hollow. Bitter, certainly. He never did take setbacks with grace, and this one must have been an especially brutal blow, at his young age.

He did not explain further that day, and it did not feel right, considering the newness of our acquaintance, to press him. I would find out soon enough that Grindelwald’s experiments had led to his expulsion, that he had travelled Europe for almost a year before coming to Godric’s Hollow, chasing folk-tales, as he said. I would find out, too, that he was just seventeen when I first met him.

I drifted around for the rest of that afternoon in something of a daze, doing my chores by rote and nothing more. Dreaming. His face swam behind my eyes. I could not account for why, I did not even attempt to. I let myself dream of him. I wanted to see him again. Planned conversations we might have, thrilled with the excitement of being able to spill out my ideas to someone who might listen.

I was still thinking of him when I fell asleep. Shallow sleep, restless. Even magic provided no easy solution to cooling our old stone house in those hot summers. My room was sticky, the air still.

I had barely slept, it felt, when I was woken suddenly.

Some of you who are parents might understand how it feels to be woken by a child’s agonised wailing. Might. For those of you who do not, I do not think that I can explain it. Suffice to say — though it suffices not at all — that, every time this happened, the sound turned my blood to ice.

The whole house was shaking, and I tumbled out of bed before my mind could catch up with my body, almost falling over my feet on my way down the stairs. I slept in the attic, you see, and my two younger siblings had their bedrooms on the floor below. Our house was taller than it was wide, as is common in older wizarding buildings, I’ve never been sure why. But that hardly matters now. Where were we? Ah, yes. Ariana was screaming.

She was prone to nightmares, and we all knew that. But her nightmares could be dangerous. The way the house was rocking, I would hardly be surprised if the crockery in the kitchen was at risk.

I paused in her doorway to catch my breath. Aberforth had gotten to Ariana before me, and I was hardly surprised. Yet she was still screaming, in between sobs now. She was sitting up in bed, her sheets tangled around her waist, and his arms were around her.

Aberforth looked up when I came in, and his eyes met mine. His were wide, glazed with fear, and he looked pale and tired. “Al…”

I crossed the room in two strides, perhaps, not likely much more, and bent over the two of them. “It’s all right.” I said, to both my siblings at once. I wondered where my mother was. She never seemed to come fast enough at moments like this.

I stroked Ariana’s cheek, hot and sticky with sweat and tears. Clammy, she felt feverish. “Ari.” I soothed. “It’s all right. Everything’s fine.”

“Al.” She whimpered, and reached out to grab a handful of my nightshirt.

“Yes. I’m here. We’ve got you, you’re safe.”

“Safe…” Her tearful eyes looked heavy. “Promise?”

“Promise, love.” I bent to kiss her forehead. “Shall we stay with you a while?”

“Mm.” She seemed calmer now. Ariana’s moods never did last. She was prone to quick outbursts, not lingering melancholy. Not usually. Not yet. “Tell us a story, Al?”

My eyes met Aberforth’s, and he looked very young, and just as eager for a comforting distraction as our sister was. So I smiled at them, and settled myself on the floor. “Babbity Rabbity?” It was Ariana’s favourite. Repetition soothed her.

I fell asleep on her floor that night. Not for the first time, nor the last. Somebody — I assume it was Aberforth — covered me in a blanket sometime between when I fell asleep and when I woke, stiff and sore. Ariana’s bed was empty when I woke, but made, so she wouldn’t have left in so much of a hurry. She must have gone out with Aberforth to help with his morning chores. Feeding the goats, she always did enjoy that.

I remember feeling distinctly unsettled that morning, and not just by the ache sleeping on a wooden floor had left me with. My mouth was dry, and I was covered in sweat still, but that was not it either. I had dreamed, I knew, but I could remember no details. Nothing of the dream that had left me in a state, save for one image. Gellert’s odd eyes, alive with a fire that looked as though it was ready to smolder out of control.


End file.
